Ranking yourself relative to your peers

Are you a Legend in your own mind?

When is the last time (if ever) you took a serious look at how you rank in your career amongst your colleagues?

THIS is my homework for Lesson #13 of 87 in Seth Godin’s Freelancer Course, and as with ALL assignments in this course, I am required to publish my response in a public place.

The requirement to do these assignments in a public place definitely ups the ante in terms of being candid and honest. Of course if it weren’t to be published, I could easily justify ranking myself towards the TOP in ALL categories . . . because – well – I am a legend in my own mind just as you are in yours.

BUT . . . How far does THAT get us? If I’m not truthful and embellish abundantly, I’m under-serving myself because I would then likely not push myself to improve in these areas of my life and career and would putting myself in the “comfort zone” continuing to do the same things while expecting different results.

I’m not taking this course to keep myself in my comfort zone . . . I’m “here” to learn and stretch myself as much as possible so as to get the most benefit possible out of this course.

Compared to others who do what you do, rank yourself on: reputation, knowledge, expertise, tools, handiness.

My first thought was to review my results on the StrengthsFinder test I took as an assignment in the Entrepreneur Organization Catalyst Program last month.At least in my mind, these offer a “base-line” of strengths upon which I can build as to how they might impact my rankings in these areas.

Reputation – 8 – The humble side of me feels like this is higher than it should be, but I’ve been paying attention recently to “what people say about me when I’m not in the room” and have had a number of recent, unsolicited validating endorsements published and spoken publicly. I can say that my most treasured value is integrity, and I have always done whatever it takes to have an off the charts accountability to doing the right things. Additionally, I’ve had much involvement in the REALTOR community as a Trainer and Coach and am involved with the local Association . . . and am a consistent voice on my blogsites http://BarryOwensBlog.com and on the Http://ActiveRain.com (National level REALTOR site). So . . . While I feel like I have a very good reputation locally and Nationally, I know I can improve by “cranking up the volume” . . . that is putting intentional work into building the “Barry Owen brand”

Knowledge – 9 – Having been a Real Estate Sales Professional for 24 years and a Principal Broker for 10 of those years and a life-long student of “Organizational Development/Transformation”, I have high confidence in my knowledge level relative to my peers. Mentioning all of the years in business pales in comparison to the fact that I have always been a seeker of knowledge, so I attend lots classes and I teach lots of classes. I’ve never attended or taught any class during which I failed to learn something new and significant. I’m a voracious reader of blogs, news, books, and real estate industry media sources. So . . . No 10 because this is a continuoius improvement requirement.

Expertise – 7 – A I consider the StrengthsFinder, I realize this moment that I’m a 10 on the technical side of things with strategy, relationship skills, high responsibility, plenty of confidence, and cranial at that . . . but I know that my personality profile sometimes gets in the way of my optimizing my expertise. On the DISC test, I am a DSC which means I have virtually no “I” which essentially means I don’t like people. Truly, I DO like people, but I am somewhat introverted which can be problematic for a sales person or someone who needs to recruit. Working a room is exhausting to me and WAY out of my comfort zone. This affects my “grade” relative to other professionals who do what I do. I “own” this as not being a strength and am focused on filling this gap in my organization by hiting the right person who can/will do this with ease.

Tools – 6 – The “D” in me often keeps me from optimizing the tools I have. The result is that my other qualities (Strategic, Intellection, etc) result in me finding the BEST tools in the industry AND concocting powerful and innovative ideas for using these tools, I often lose focus before fully implementing them. I am currently “re-tooling” the entire back-office for Pareto Realty and have pledged to keep myself accountable to accomplishing full implementation. Again, I know that for my organization to thrive to its full potential, I will need to hire an implementer – This would be in the form an Office Administrator. I intend to do so within the next 6 months.

Handiness – 9 – I’m handy to a fault. Maybe it’s the Army Engineer in me, but I LOVE to troubleshoot issues and strategize solutions for problems. I also love DOING stuff and displaying my handiness. Sometimes, this manifests with me taking on plumbing or electrical projects in the house etc. I very much enjoy this handiness strength but actively suppress it in the interest of taking care of the things that matter more in my world. Recent story was my intent to install my new Wood Burning stove myself . . . Better sense showed up before I tackled it, and I called Ashbusters to do it.

Which will you invest in developing?

My primary focus now is to invest in “Leveraging” my strengths by delegating our outsourcing the things that distract me from my core work. I believe I answered this in more detail above.

So . . . There it is . . . Durst you dare to do the same?

I’d love to hear how you rate yourself relative to others who do the work you do.

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